1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for driving a self-emitting (self-luminous) panel such as an organic EL panel.
2. Description of the Related Art
Unlike a liquid crystal panel, a self-emitting panel such as an organic EL panel or a plasma display panel has a light emitting element which itself constitutes a picture element and emits light. The service life and the power consumption of each light emitting element depend on the product of total light emission time and light emission intensity (brightness, luminance).
If it is possible for a self-emitting panel driving apparatus to shorten the total light emission time of each light emitting element and/or to lower the light emission intensity thereof, it is then possible to extend the service life of the self-emitting panel and reduce the power consumption thereof.
Some efforts were made in the past to extend the life of self-emitting panels and to reduce the power consumption of the self-emitting panels.
An object of the present invention is to provide an improved method and apparatus for driving a self-emitting panel, which can extend the service life of the self-emitting panel and reduce the power consumption of the self-emitting panel.
According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of creating drive data for a respective frame of image frame data based on a data signal containing the image frame data, and driving a self-emitting panel based on the created drive data to display a two-dimensional image, the self-emitting panel having two crossing electrode groups such that intersecting points of the two electrode groups serve as light emitting points, the method comprising the steps of adjusting the image frame data such that intensity of at least one frame of the image frame data is reduced or adjusted, and creating the drive data based on the image frame data after the intensity adjustment.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus for driving a self-emitting panel based on a data signal containing image frame data to display a two-dimensional image, the self-emitting panel having two crossing electrode groups such that intersecting points of the two electrode groups serve as light emitting points, the apparatus comprising image frame creation means for extracting the image frame data from the data signal, intensity adjusting means for adjusting a value of the image frame data to reduce or adjust intensity of a respective frame of the image frame data, creation means for creating the drive data based on the image frame data of which intensity has been adjusted, and a driver for driving the self-emitting panel based on the drive data.